


astrolabe

by kyrilu



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Future Fic, M/M, Murder
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-02
Updated: 2014-05-02
Packaged: 2018-01-21 14:26:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,827
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1553603
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kyrilu/pseuds/kyrilu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Will consults a pupil about his teacher.</p>
            </blockquote>





	astrolabe

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much to maosquare for drawing art for this fic! [The fanart is over here.](https://kyrilu.tumblr.com/post/86404848554/maosquare-this-work-for-kyrilu-s-brownham-fic)

_Lift up your eyes on high and see: who has created these?_

Isaiah 40: 26.

* * *

 

 Matthew Brown is sleeping when Will comes up to the cell. It isn’t his old cell, and it’s in a different block than Dr. Lecter’s, but he has a vague sense of unease in his stomach. He has to shuffle the case file in his hands to recall to himself his purpose. Two families dead. Shards of glass on their eyes like diamonds, like dolls you see in display cases with glittering fake gemstones in the sockets.

He doesn’t wake Brown up. Just watches him, gets a feel of him, and knows he isn’t wrong. There is a hint of nostalgia here, familiarity, the same as those two dead families. Eleven dead, including the pets. Will focuses on Brown: Brown smiling at him and promising him his vengeance. The ear in the envelope and the charred bailiff suspended on the antlers. They are all his handiwork, but there’s something else.

He had stood at the crime scenes with the image of the orderly lingering at the corners of his vision.

“It’s a long-shot, Will,” Jack had said, when Will had told him. They both bear scars left by Hannibal Lecter - glass and knife - and Jack still looks at Will with concern. But Will knows. It’s the same. It’s not in the forensics, but it’s an ingrained, obvious truth.

Will does not look at the papers in his hands. Will closes his eyes to the other inmates’ noises, and when he opens them, Brown is awake.

“Mr. Graham,” Brown says, in a metallic-like tone, a voice unused to speaking, still carrying a lisp. Brown clears his throat and says, “You’re here.” He seems small in his hospital jumpsuit.

Will doesn’t bother with a greeting. He wonders if he has the same sway over Brown - he doesn’t think he does, he’s the one who got Brown in here, after all - but he opens with the question, “Who taught you how to shoot, Matthew?”

Brown sits up from his cot, drags a hand through his sleep-tousled hair, slowly. “Oh,” he says with a laugh. “So that's what this is about.”

“You get news in here. You know exactly what this is about.”

“Yeah,” Brown says. “Sometimes I think I can feel the pull of the full moon. I don’t know if I need to tell you how it feels like. I think you know.” He gives Will a smile that is halfway mocking, halfway soft, and says, “You can solve this one, Will. You don’t need me.”

There. There: an admission. Will can taste the victory. He’s close. He needs a name, though, and he realizes that Brown won’t say it. Not at once. Instead he decides to talk more, to dance around his deductions. To see if he’s right.

Will says, “He was your teacher. Your mentor. Somehow, sometime, he abandoned you, and you went searching. You tried to use me as his replacement.”

“And look where that landed me,” Brown agrees. There is a dark anger in his eyes. “This is what you’re here for, Mr. Graham? I was your orderly, your companion, your admirer, and your weapon. He was years ago. He can go on all he wants.” He moves closer to the bars, seems to grow a little bigger.

Brown says, “Leave me alone. Chase after him. I’ve left this damned story a long, long time ago.”

Will doesn’t back down. Unflinching, he says, “His name, Matthew.”

“Go bother another psychopath. I heard Hannibal Lecter is practically my neighbor.” Matthew spits out Lecter’s name as if it’s poison.

Despite himself, Will stiffens.

“Was he your teacher, Mr. Graham? It would be a wonderful irony, y’know. Did you cozy up to him after you were free? Were you glad that I failed? It didn’t mean a fucking thing, did it?”

“It meant,” Will says, “that there was someone who did care enough to listen to me, then. That’s something.” He pushes on. “You were close. You really were.”

He sees Brown swallow, a bob in his throat. It’s what Brown wanted to hear. It’s what he wanted Will to have come for. Maybe he was the one who left the Tooth Fairy, because he never told him this. There is something in Brown that is a student, a copycat, and Will sees it. Tries not to think of Lecter murmuring to him about death.

Will turns to leave. “I’ll be back tomorrow.”

He can feel Brown’s gaze burning onto his back. It’s a sad thing, a man who always tries to be somebody else’s creature. It won’t stop. It probably feels like every time Will stands at a crime scene, and every time he still thinks he hears Lecter’s voice in his head.

 

* * *

 

Will sits with a bottle of whiskey in hand, looking at the nearly full moon. He’s in a hotel room in Baltimore, thinking about the Tooth Fairy and Matthew Brown. His phone is vibrating in his pocket - probably Jack Crawford. He doesn’t pick it up.

The sky is polluted here, but he can feel it anyway. The magnetic pull of the stars, and then the moon, nearly complete, nearly bright.

There are no windows near Brown’s cell at the hospital. But Brown can see it. Will can, too.

 

* * *

 

He doesn’t go to Brown the first thing in the morning. His feet take him another direction and he realizes that he’s about to go to Dr. Lecter.

He stops himself. He stops at the beginning of the cell block. He’s sure that Lecter can smell him, but he doesn’t go any further.

 

* * *

 

Brown is murmuring a prayer when Will finally gets there. “Lord, make me an instrument,” and it sounds like remembrance, not quite a ritual. He cuts himself off when he notices Will. “Good morning,” he says.

Will nods, jerkily. He is unsure where to start, but then remembers the papers. He slips the file over to Brown. “I have a feeling you would like to see these.”

Brown holds up a photograph to the light. Then he does it with another, and another. Will knows each one, and doesn’t miss how Brown’s eyes almost warm at the sight.

“Look at you,” Brown says, under his breath, to the picture. “I don’t imagine you like what they’re calling you, though. Bad critics, the lot of them.”

“What does he call himself?”

“A dragon,” Brown answers, almost offhand. “He hunts like a werewolf, by the full moon, but he thinks he’s a dragon. Are you familiar with Revelations? ‘Then another sign appeared in the sky; it was a huge red dragon, with seven heads and ten horns, and on its heads were seven diadems. Its tail swept away a third of the stars in the sky...’”

Stars, again.

“I once wanted to hunt by his side,” Brown says, quietly, and he gently pushes the file back to Will. “It hurts, doesn’t it? To be chosen, even for awhile.”

( _Matty, Matty_ , he’d called him, and he showed him how to stand, with the gun cocked and ready to fire.)

Will takes back the file. “Blunt imitation,” he says. “You must’ve made him...proud, once upon a time.”

Brown smiles. “Yeah. I did. He liked that dumbass eager kid. I couldn’t kill Andy without using a gun, even if that gave me away. I wanted to know you, but it’s still him. Still my first.”

He looks at Will and says, “I wish you were my first.”

“Would it have turned out differently?” Will says. He has chosen, now, to not be like Hannibal Lecter. He doesn’t think that he should be a mentor. He is not the Tooth Fairy, or a dragon, or anything that everyone else wants him to be.

“I don’t know,” Brown says. “I think the question is: If I helped you escape instead of trying to kill your Judas, would you have ran with me?”

Will thinks of Brown’s prayer: _Lord, make me an instrument._ He doesn’t like this. He can feel Brown’s pain, like an open wound bleeding, hungry twisted pain wanting a master, wanting a place to strike. He knows that he’s being pulled into it. He needs the name. He needs the name, that’s all. There will be another family. He doesn’t want to remember Lecter.

Will stares at the picture of a dead woman, pierced with bullets and bitemarks. He realizes that he wants to reach through the bars and touch Matthew. The first name is creeping up to him: _Matthew._

His identity is blurring at the edges. He thinks that he’s the Tooth Fairy and he thinks that he’s Matthew Brown and he thinks that he’s Will Graham. The veil drops a little further, and he thinks that he’s Hannibal Lecter.

 

* * *

 

The Tooth Fairy - the Dragon, rather - kills in Baltimore. It’s his furthest kill up north.

“It’s for me,” Matthew says. Freddie Lounds had written about federal investigator Will Graham consulting an inmate at Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane.

They’re at the crime scene. The FBI have already taken the bodies, and Will was able to convince Jack to let them bring Matthew here. Matthew doesn’t have Will’s imagination, but Will hopes this would get him to talk, to open up, even if just for a little more.

The walls are white. It’s the bedroom, where a man and woman were discovered splayed across pillows, splintered with glass. The three children were killed in the adjacent rooms. The window is open and the white curtains are fluttering like ghosts.

“Does he think you’ll protect him?” Will says, his gun digging into the small of Matthew’s back.

“It’s a gift,” Matthew says. “A thank you. He knows I haven’t given him up yet.” This is the closest that Matthew Brown will ever get to hunting with the Dragon. His speech is muffled through the mask he’s wearing, but Will can hear the wistfulness.

Will says, “Please.”

It’s a plea. He wants this to be over already.

The moonlight makes crosses across Will’s shoulders, his face, his neck. It’s on Matthew, too. The full moon is over. The cycle will begin for another time.

Three families.

There are bloodstains on the walls.

Will puts away his gun and kisses Matthew through the clear mask.

He takes off the mask and kisses him again. Matthew’s lips are dry, and he doesn’t kiss back.

“Saint Francis,” Matthew says, finally, into the space between their mouths. Then, praying: “Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.” He leans forward, and his eyes are closed, the same still man that Will saw sleeping.

Matthew whispers, “I wanted to be your chosen. So very much.”

The words could be addressed to the lingering presence of the Dragon, but Will knows that it’s for him.

It’s too late. Nothing lasts. They will find the Dragon and Matthew Brown will never feel the moon move within him ever again.


End file.
